Programme member FAQs

Report and Support is an online tool developed by Culture Shift where programme members can make a report regarding an equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) incident. You can either make a named report, which means you will be identifiable and you will receive a follow up, or an anonymous report, where you receive no follow up contact  

Report and Support is also home to information about internal and external support.

What are EDI incidents?

These are incidents which relate to protected characteristics. The Equality Act 2010 sets out nine protected characteristics:

We also consider incidents related to socio economic status and social class as an 'EDI incident'.  

Examples of an EDI incident include, but are not limited to: harassment, sexual misconduct, hate crimes, victimisation 

While we encourage all programme members to speak to their Development Lead, Achievement Partner or another Teach First staff member, we understand that this is not what everyone wants to do. Some people may feel awkward speaking about the incident or worry that it was not ‘serious enough’ for a formal report, or others may be concerned about the consequences. This form enables you to tell Teach First about an EDI incident easily and quickly. 

Teach First, in turn, will be able to better monitor the prevalence of EDI incidents  that take place on Teach First’s programmes and develop targeted interventions.

If you choose to make an anonymous report, you’ll be asked several specific questions about the incident you’re reporting. After you complete the form, you will not receive any further follow up. We’ll store the information you’ve submitted on our internal system for our Programme EDI team to use in their analysis. No-one else will have access and we won’t know it was you who completed the form. 

Even though we can’t follow up on anonymous reports, there’s a great deal of value to us in having the data. Having an anonymous reporting option can help some people to feel more confident in reporting what has happened to them. Anonymous reports help us to have a more complete picture of what is happening to our programme members and tracking the data will allow us to identify bigger trends and respond to them on an organisational level.

If you submit a named report, we’ll ask you to complete several specific questions about the incident you’re reporting. We’ll assign a member of our Programme Support team to your case, who will follow up with you. It’s likely that the person who will be assigned to your case will be your primary support role at Teach First, for example your Development Lead or Achievement Partner.  We know that there may be cases where this is not appropriate (for example if the incident is about them.) In such instances a different member of staff will be the main point of contact for you as we take the case forward.

Depending on the nature of the incident, the actions taken will vary. They might include:

Once all parties are satisfied that we’ve taken all necessary steps, we’ll close the case on our internal systems. No-one will be able to access the data further, except for data reporting reasons. Tracking the data will allow us to identify bigger trends and respond to them on an organisational level.

What if I just want to find support services?

If you do not want to make either a named or anonymous report, you can still access support through the Report and Support site. You can access this here: Support Pages

If you prefer, you can speak to your support role (this might be a Development Lead or Achievement Partner.) In the first instance, they will encourage you to complete the form. Using the form, you can use your own words and do not need to disclose any protected information to your support role. 
 
If you’re sure you’d rather not use the form, your support role will take it from there. They will take some details from you and raise a case internally on your behalf. If you speak to a member of Teach First staff, we will assume that you are happy for us to create a named report to follow up with you about the incident. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, you must use the Report and Support reporting form. 

Full details on how we keep your information is safe is available in our Privacy Notice. 

To summarise, we only collect data that relates to the incident that you’ve experienced, and we’ve developed a protocol so that only designated Teach First staff members will be able to access your sensitive data. We try to limit that to as few people as possible, and only on a need-to-know basis.

However, there are circumstances where we need to tell someone else about your report. Please see the below section ‘Is my report confidential?’ for further information.

Is my report confidential?

We are committed to handling your report sensitively and respectfully. However, there are exceptions where we may not be able to maintain confidentiality and we must escalate your report to other people – even if you do not consent. This happens when an incident that you have reported meets our internal threshold of being a 'serious incident', and therefore must be escalated in our Serious Incident Management process. 

This includes, but is not limited to, scenarios where:

If you’re not happy with how your report is handled, you can use our standard complaints procedure.